PHOENIX — A TV infomercial pitchman indicted of defrauding some-more than 226,000 people out of scarcely $52 million has died in his Arizona jail dungeon of an apparent suicide, authorities pronounced on Monday.

Donald Lapre, 47, was found passed during about 8:30 a.m. on Sunday during a trickery in Florence, Arizona, where he was being hold on rascal and other associated charges, U.S. Marshal’s orator Matt Hershey said.

Lapre, a self-proclaimed “King of Infomercials,” was available a hearing subsequent Oct after being indicted on 41 charges stemming from a national intrigue to sell what was billed as “The Greatest Vitamin in a World.”

Hershey declined to contend if Lapre had been on a self-murder watch or how he could have killed himself, citing an ongoing investigation.

Lapre had been charged with conspiracy, mail fraud, handle fraud, promotional income laundering and transactional income laundering.

Authorities pronounced Lapre and others were means to get investors to buy meaningless Internet-based businesses that essentially sole a vitamins from Apr 2003 by Oct 2007.

The sovereign grand jury indictment, finished open in June, suggested that that 226,794 people had sealed adult for a scheme, losing an estimated $51.8 million.

In a wayward note on his website, Lapre pronounced he did zero wrong.

“I did not have a ideal company, though never once did we concede one thing to be finished that would violate any law,” he wrote on donlapre.com.

“Nevertheless, since a infancy of people did not make income … we am left to quarrel a conflict that will for certain destroy what appetite we have left inside.”